


Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well

by Smalls2233



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Full Shift Derek Hale, Full Shift Werewolves, M/M, Mindfuck, Murder, Paranoia, tags to be updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smalls2233/pseuds/Smalls2233
Summary: When Stiles joined the FBI he wasn’t sure what exactly he had expected the job would be like. He had experience with seeing the FBI come in on some cases around Beacon Hills, had heard his dad complain time and time again about Rafe McCall. Then of course he had seen The X-Files in middle school and Hannibal back in high school, all painting pictures of the exciting lives of special agents.He really hadn’t expected it to be so boring.The town he was placed in was the smallest, most dull town ever. It had a single bar, a video rental store that somehow still clung on to life support, one gas station, a small grocery store, a few small restaurants, and the one shining grace, a little coffee shop called The Silver Bullet.----Stiles thinks his life is boring, he doesn't realize just how wrong he is until he's too deep to back out.
Relationships: Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Chris Argent/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Chris Argent/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 76
Kudos: 156





	1. Chapter 1

When Stiles joined the FBI he wasn’t sure what exactly he had expected the job would be like. He had experience with seeing the FBI come in on some cases around Beacon Hills, had heard his dad complain time and time again about Rafe McCall. Then of course he had seen  _ The X-Files _ in middle school and  _ Hannibal _ back in high school, all painting pictures of the exciting lives of special agents. 

He really hadn’t expected it to be so boring. 

There were much fewer high profile serial killer cases in backwoods Washington, the lovely spot where he got tossed out of the academy into, and a whole hell of a lot more white collar nonsense. It wasn’t that he expected that every week he’d have a new case of bodies being brutalized and displayed in some new and disturbing way, but he had expected to have at least one serial killer case to look into.

Yeah, nope.

What was even worse was that alongside the boring, uninteresting cases, the town he was placed in was the smallest, most dull town ever. It had a single bar, a video rental store that somehow still clung on to life support, one gas station, a small grocery store, a few small restaurants, and the one shining grace, a little coffee shop called The Silver Bullet.

The coffee shop was owned by a couple, Chris and Peter. They didn’t seem like the type of guys to own a coffee shop that had cute pastries and delicately crafted latte art. Chris was an ex-marine, apparently he had worked in private security for a while after getting out of the service before changing gears completely. Peter used to work in criminal law, even was a partner at a firm. 

And then he lost his family in a fire, afterwards he abandoned the law firm and started the coffee shop up with Chris. Stiles actually remembered hearing about that house fire on the news. Peter was from Beacon Hills, the same as him. It was weird how small the world was. 

Stiles ended up spending a couple hours a week at the shop. It was a good spot to relax and read through documents. And good god there were so many documents to read. His life really had a lot less busting down doors and a lot more reading page after page of mind numbing nonsense than he ever could have expected. 

“Hey, Stiles.” Chris flashed a brilliant smile at him as he walked into the coffee shop one snowy January evening. “Wanna be a guinea pig?”

Stiles set his laptop and folder of notes down at his usual table and walked over to the counter. “Sure, what’re you testing?” He asked and drummed his fingers against the wood. 

“Peter had an idea for an almond mocha with coconut milk. He wants to try out a vegan menu.”

“I’m pretty certain the entire population of vegans in town is the one of the chicks in the cyber crime unit. Who the hell is he trying to market to?” Stiles asked with a laugh. “But sure, I’ll try it.”

“After twenty years together I’ve just stopped questioning him,” Chris said with a shrug. “But thanks for being a sport, Stiles.”

Stiles tried to ignore the feeling of warmth that bubbled up when Chris smiled at him. Yes, Chris was exactly his type — Peter too for that matter — and they were the literal only other queer men in town, but the guys were quite happily married to each other. In a town this small, there was no way that he’d be able to get away with any homewrecking. So, yeah, the only answer was to squash down any warm and fuzzies and to force himself to ignore the fact that both Chris and Peter seemed adverse to buttoning up the top five buttons of their shirts.

Fuck, one day Peter had worn a goddamned cardigan with nothing underneath it. That day, Stiles thought he was going to have a heart attack. 

“Can I also get my usual sandwich and a glass of water?” Stiles asked, reaching for his wallet. 

“They still got you on the boring shit?” Chris asked as he stepped back to slice off some sourdough and layered up some chicken, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, and pesto before throwing that into a sandwich press. “When I got out of the Marines, I was offered a position in the FBI. Ended up turning it down for the family business. What you’re dealing with makes me glad I didn’t join.”

Stiles shook his head as he laughed. “I didn’t realize that Martha Stewart crimes were what I was gonna be dealing with over Ted Bundy crimes.” He pulled his debit card out and held it, ready to hand it over to Chris. “Or, like, what about the aliens? Mulder and Scully prepared me for that.”

“It’s Washington, Bigfoot’s more likely here.” Chris rang him up and swiped his debit card before handing it back to Stiles. “Maybe some werewolves or vampires too, just to spice things up.” He chuckled under his breath at that.

“Wow, big  _ Twilight _ fan, Chris? Wouldn’t have pegged you as one.” Stiles pocketed his wallet and grinned. To be fair, he didn’t have much ground to stand on, he read  _ Twilight  _ back in the day and still held a certain level of fondness for it. Plus, there was that time in high school he, Scott, Isaac, Boyd, Erica, Kira, and Lydia all got super stoned and marathoned all four movies. What a time in his life.

“My secret is out,” Chris said with that brilliant white smile that made Stiles’ heart hurt. “I’ll give you one of Peter’s new pastries if you promise to keep it to yourself.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Argent, but I’ll have to take it. What sort of pastry?”

“He’s been trying out a vegan puff pastry recipe, I think today’s batch is raspberry, almond, and chocolate.” The sandwich press beeped, making Chris step back from the register to open it up and slide the sandwich from the press onto a plate. “I don’t think he’s totally there yet with the recipe but it should still taste fine.”

“I grew up on the finest pastries the frozen section can offer, I’m quite the discerning customer.”

“You sure are.” The shop was empty aside from him so Stiles wasn’t surprised as Chris grabbed his iPad and followed him over to his usual spot. “Peter’s out taking some of today’s leftovers to town hall, he should be back in half an hour to get your drink started.”

“God, you two are disgustingly good citizens. Do you spend your Sundays rescuing lost puppies from the freeway and nursing them back to health?” Seriously, Stiles hadn’t thought people like Chris and Peter existed before meeting them. Pretty much every time he was over at the shop, there was a story about some other good deed they had done. If he didn’t know them like he did, he would have thought that they were making up all the shit they did.

Chris raised his eyebrows. “Would you believe me if I told you that we’re been fostering a wolfdog that some asshole left tied up in their backyard during the fires last fall?”

“Fuck, dude, nobody is this perfect. Seriously, you gotta be doing something awful on the down low to balance all this out.” It was totally unfair how great they were. 

“Well, I guess there’s the serial killer thing we’ve got going on,” Chris said with a smirk.

Stiles couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of him. “You I could maybe believe. But Peter? Mr. Ex-lawyer pastry chef? Nah, a crippling cocaine addiction seems more likely to me.”

Chris laughed loudly at that. “Well, unfortunately for you, we’ll just have to keep being unbelievably perfect since I’ve never seen Peter with any blow.” He paused before winking at Stiles, “Well, not that sort of blow.”

“Oh my god.” It took Stiles a few seconds to fully process what Chris had said. He had never heard Chris make any sort of innuendo before and the shock of it made him choke on his bite of his sandwich. Peter, he was used to casual flirtation and dirty jokes, but Chris was always the straight laced one. 

“Did you poison him without me?” Peter walked into the shop while Stiles was trying to cough up the piece of sandwich lodged in his windpipe. “I thought the deal was we do that together.”

“Whoops, my bad,” Chris deadpanned. 

“Chris made an innuendo for the first time in his life,” Stiles said after he cleared his airway. 

“Aw, I’m finally rubbing off on him, I’m so proud,” Peter cooed. He leaned over to give Chris a kiss on the cheek before headed back to the counter. 

“It was low hanging fruit, I couldn’t help myself,” Chris replied. He rolled his eyes but he had a fond grin on his face. “Make Stiles your new concoction and get him one of your trial pastries.”

Fuck, they were perfect for each other, Stiles was envious. He had a few girlfriends and boyfriends through high school and college but he never found anyone who he actually clicked with quite like Chris and Peter clicked with each other. The closest he had gotten was with Lydia but it had been in a ‘Wow, glad we tried the dating thing but turns out we’re just meant to be super close best friends, not partners’ way.

“Your wish is my command,” Peter said and blew Chris a kiss. “Chris tell you the spiel about me trying out a new vegan menu?”

“For the one vegan in town? Yeah, he did.”

“Cheeky brat.” Peter turned on the tap and quickly washed his hands before grabbing a mug to prepare Stiles’ drink. “It doesn’t hurt to have options to expand our clientele.”

“Uh-huh,” Chris said, raising his eyebrows at Stiles and shaking his head. 

“Well, in other news, Christopher and I were thinking about going backpacking this weekend. You ever do that, Stiles?” Peter asked, looking at Stiles as he poured some flavorings into the mug. There was a look in his eyes that Stiles couldn’t quite place, it was something similar to, but not quite, amused interest.

Stiles shook his head with a laugh. “Nah, my weekends are usually taken up with  _ WoW _ . Where’re you guys going?” 

“We’ll have to drag you out of your basement one weekend. This trip would probably be too much for you,” Peter replied with a grin stretched across his lips. “We’re not going too far away, fifteen miles out of town, but we’ll be going pretty deep in the woods.”

Stiles hummed. “There’ve been a few animal attacks around here recently, right?” He had been itching to get involved in the investigation when the bodies were first getting discovered but before the FBI could step in, the local police had declared them victims of animal, not human, attacks. There had been wolf fur found all over the bodies and the wound patterns lined up with wolves rather than humans.

The grin on Peter’s face widened to a Cheshire level. “You’re worried about us, how sweet.”

“What he means to say is that we’ll be fine,” Chris cut in with a roll of his eyes. “I bring a gun with me when we go, though depending on how much of an ass Peter’s being that day, I might let a wolf get a little bit of a taste of him.”

Stiles snorted at that, he could almost believe that Chris would do that. “How long are you guys gonna be out for?”

“We’re leaving Friday afternoon and we’ll be back Sunday night, so not too long of a trip,” Chris answered. He paused for a moment and pursed his lips. “Could you do us a favor actually?”

“Yeah, sure, what’s up?” Stiles asked.

“You know how I mentioned we’re fostering a dog? I was wondering if you’d be able to come over to take care of him while we’re out, Derek tends to get a little anxious when we’re gone. You can crash in our guest room if you want.”

“Derek? That’s a weird name for your dog. But yeah, I don’t mind.”

“He came named.” Peter carried over two small plates, one with a mug of coffee and one with a pastry. “We’ll owe you big time, but fair warning, he’s not the cuddliest dog in the world. Did Chris mention the fact that he’s a wolfdog?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? I didn’t think they were legal around here.” Stiles stood up to grab one of the plates from Peter.

Chris shrugged in response. “I’m not totally sure on the legalities, but the shelter was gonna put him down if we didn’t step in. Honestly, you probably won’t see too much of him this weekend but if you stop by our place during your lunch, Peter can let you in to meet him so he recognizes that you’re not some stranger breaking into the house.”

“Yeah, I can totally do that. Just leave a list of everything I should do. I once dog sat my friend Lydia’s dog Prada back in high school. Sure, she was five pounds and used to being carried around like a baby, but that can’t be too different from a wolfdog. Right?”

Peter smirked and winked. “Totally the same.”

——

Chris and Peter’s house was fucking gigantic. Sure, anything was big compared to the one bed one bath seven hundred square foot house Stiles was renting, but their place was legitimately huge. It was on the far edge of town bordering on the forest with their nearest neighbor being at least two miles away. 

“We’ll have limited cell service but if anything comes up, call us and we’ll try and get back to you as soon as possible.” Chris loaded up the back of his SUV with his and Peter’s backpacks and hiking gear as he spoke. He looked unfairly good in his winter gear, snow lightly dusting his shoulders and hair. 

“If Derek eats me I’ll yell for help really loudly” Stiles said dryly. It was only mostly a joke. He wasn’t sure where the dog part of wolfdog came into play with Derek. Hell, he seemed more like a fucking dire wolf than anything and it had taken most of Stiles’ effort not to jump when he first saw him. Massive burns stretched across his body, leaving large patches of scarred, furless skin. 

“You’ll be fine, Derek’s probably just gonna hole up in his den the entire time aside from when you set some food out for him,” Peter said and clasped Stiles on the shoulder. 

“You guys must spend a fortune on his food.” There was no dry kibble or even canned food. They had an entire chest freezer filled with meat for Derek. The damn dog was probably eating better than most people.

“He’s worth it.” Peter shrugged. “Plus it’s really not that bad, Chris goes hunting every fall and bags a few deer. Other than that, we’ve got some friends with ranches who cut us deals on beef and pork.”

“Again, we really appreciate you doing this for us.” Chris closed the trunk and walked over to where Peter and Stiles were standing. “Wi-fi password is on the fridge and feel free to help yourself to any food and alcohol in the house. We should be back by five on Sunday.”

“You two are nuts going backpacking in this weather,” Stiles said with a shake of his head. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow on the ground but it was enough to make him want to curl up in front of a fire and nap, not hike twenty miles like they were planning.

“Nuts about backpacking maybe.” Peter winked at him and patted his back a few times before he headed to the passenger side of the car. “Be a good boy and hold down the fort for us, okay?”

Stiles’ brain momentarily short circuited at the  _ be a good boy _ and he didn’t quite catch what Chris said to him. “Sorry, what?” He asked, blinking to restart his brain.

Chris gave him a knowing look, like he knew exactly what had just happened. “I said we’ll see you Sunday.”

“Yeah, see you,” Stiles said and waved as Chris hopped into the car and started to back out of the massive driveway. Fuck, they knew exactly what they did to him. He really needed to work on his subtlety game apparently.

He turned around to head back into the house now that Chris and Peter were gone. It was too damn cold to stay out any longer than he had to. Seriously, he had no clue how the two of them could stand going out camping in this sort of weather.

Before entering the house, Stiles kicked the snow off of his shoes and shook off the best he could so he didn’t track snow all over the place. When he opened the door and took off his shoes, he thought he might have seen a black flash that could have been Derek, but he was gone in a flash. 

“If you eat me I’m gonna be so pissed,” Stiles called out. There was no response, obviously, but he could have sworn he heard Derek make a chuffing noise but he chalked that up to his imagination.

Stiles headed over to the kitchen where he left his bag of stuff and sat down at the island to play on his phone and eat some dinner. Chris and Peter, the saints that they were, left out a plate of food for him along with a cold beer. They were apparently gonna give him like five hundred bucks for coming over to watch Derek on such short notice and Stiles wondered if he somehow had accidentally stumbled his way into a sugar daddy — daddies? — situation. 

Yeah, no, that was stupid. What was happening was that Chris and Peter were stupid rich and probably thought five hundred was a normal amount of money to give to a dog sitter. He took a bite of his pasta and snorted, picturing the cost of a banana scene from  _ Arrested Development _ . He wondered if that was a conversation the two of them ever had.

“Want some chicken, Derek?” Stiles called out. He picked out a large piece of chicken from its nest of pasta with his fingers and scraped off any sauce from it. “I know you’re lurking somewhere around here.”

Well, he assumed Derek was at least. He couldn’t actually see the massive dog but he doubted that Derek was letting him out of his sight.

After a few seconds passed, Stiles heard the soft sound of paws on hardwood as Derek cautiously padded into the kitchen. His head was held low and his ears were pricked up like radar dishes, listening for any sound.

Stiles felt the same shock of fear he felt when he first saw Derek but this time, the feeling of pity overwhelmed that fear when he looked at the creature. He only seemed to have a single working eye and his teeth were bared on one side thanks to the fire burning away the flesh there. It was a miracle that he survived the wildfires.

“Hey buddy,” Stiles said gently. Slowly, carefully he slid off of the barstool and crouched down to get to eye level with Derek. He held out a cautious hand with the piece of chicken. “I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”

Quick as a whip, Derek snapped up the piece of chicken, nearly taking off Stiles’ fingertips as he did so. He scampered off with the poultry in his mouth, probably going to a place he felt safe to go eat it. That was fine, Stiles wasn’t exactly expecting the dog to sit and cuddle with him. Hopefully he was starting to realize that he wasn’t a threat or any danger at least.

After that, Stiles finished his dinner and cleaned his plate off in the sink before he headed over to set up his laptop in the guest room and do some work. Well, okay, that’s what he planned on doing. He had the most innocent of intentions in the world, but a door in the hallway to the guest room was open and he was curious. Some people would call him nosy, okay, but look, it was what made him so good at detective work.

So Stiles went to the guest room to set his stuff down before he headed back to the open room. The door hadn’t been open when Peter had shown him around at lunch, making Stiles think that he and Chris must have grabbed stuff out of there earlier. They did give him free rein of the house, so like, if they didn’t want him nosing around, they should have locked the door.

He hummed as he shouldered the door open and walked into the room. It seemed to be just another guest bedroom converted into a little library. Most of the books and pamphlets were about trekking and camping. That actually made a lot of sense, and there was an entire wall made up of maps.

“Damn, they are intense about camping, aren’t they?” Stiles said to himself as he walked up to that wall. Trails were all highlighted and locations were circled on all of the maps. It actually was pretty cute, a wall decorated with trips they had taken in the past. Each map was labeled with a date, adding up to about one or two a month. 

Something about the spots Chris and Peter had highlighted seemed familiar to Stiles but he couldn’t quite place it. They must have just mentioned them to him in the past or something. He usually tended to zone out when Peter talked about camping trips.

Either way, his curiosity was sated. As he headed out of the room, he idly wondered what it would be like to be so rich that he could have an entire room in his house dedicated to his hobbies. Like Christ, he couldn’t afford to keep much clutter in the shoebox he lived in while they got to have tons of books they probably didn’t read all that often.

Fucking rich people.

Stiles flopped down on the bed in the guest room and opened up his laptop to watch some youtube videos. He had some work to catch up on too but figured he could get through a few of videos in his subscription backlog first and then move on to listening to some videos as he read through pages and pages of evidence that yes this local chocolate shop was indeed used as a front for a meth dealer.

It was mind numbingly boring shit, he had a few spreadsheets open that he had been spending the last week going through, looking at the amounts of chocolate the owner was buying versus the amount he said he was selling. Like, it was obviously falsified but they had to be able to prove it.

Eventually, when he felt like his eyes were going to bleed out of his face, Stiles thought back to the maps. What would be more entertaining than reading through financial records? Well, drilling a hole through his skull would be more entertaining, but checking out the routes they did and how intense they were would be much better. So he picked up his laptop and headed back over to the office.

Derek was laying out in the hallway when he headed out of the guest room. “Hey buddy, keeping an eye on me?” Stiles asked, giving the dog a wide berth. “I don’t have more chicken for you, sorry.” He had already been fed dinner and Stiles didn’t feel like getting raw meat all over his hands at the time.

Derek huffed out a noise that almost sounded disappointed and his single eye stared at Stiles. Actually, glared was a more accurate summary. God, that dog had a mean face.

“They ever take you camping with them?” Stiles asked and opened the door to the small office. “Bet you could climb mountains better than either of them.”

Derek sneezed on his leg and Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin. Fuck dude, he hadn’t even realized the dog had stood up. They needed to put a bell on his collar or something.

“Peter wants to take me along one day. How do I tell him that camping with all the bugs and weather sounds like literally the worst thing in the world?” He pulled out a chair and sat down in front of the wall of maps. “Sure, I have to keep in shape for the job but spending my weekend hiking twenty miles? I’ll pass on that.”

Some of their weekend trips seemed to go even longer than twenty miles actually. One of the paths they had highlighted stretched to around thirty miles. They must have taken an entire week for that one because the idea of doing ten miles a day seemed brutal.

Stiles went to the site for the park and searched through the trails. He frowned as he scrolled through the results, there were a bunch of shorter trails available, even a few that went for fifteen or twenty miles, but he didn’t see a trail that lasted thirty miles in there.

It wasn’t that he was an expert at reading maps, but the trail was pretty clearly marked, though not labeled, on the map. Maybe things had changed over the last few months since the trip was marked as having been done back in the previous winter. So he plugged the page into an archive site and lo and behold, he saw a thirty mile trail.

So why wasn’t that trail available anymore? There had been some pretty crazy storms back in spring, so maybe something happened then? He copied the trail name and pasted it into his search engine, curiosity piqued. 

_ Trail Closed At State Forest, Animal Attack Victims Pass Away _ , the first headline read. Huh, he hadn’t realized parks were closing trails because of the attacks. He clicked on the article and it had a map of its own, highlighting the trail and giving a mile marker for where the bodies were found, brutalized and mauled by what seemed to be either a pack of wolves or a mountain lion.

Small world, the bodies were found a couple of weeks after their trip. Stiles ran his finger along the highlighted trail and a frown pulled at his lips as he noticed that one of the areas they had marked as where they camped was fairly close to where the people were killed. Really small world.

The rational part of his brain told him that if they were backcountry camping, there were probably a couple of spots that people regularly stopped at. Hell, Stiles wouldn’t have been surprised if Chris and Peter had marked those campsite spots looking at what other people had suggested online. But still, a week apart and the same spot, he was curious.

He plugged in another trail from the wall and saw nothing. There were some reported wolf sightings along the trail and people being warned to be careful and not to camp alone, but no bodies. A few more maps were like that and then he found another two maps that lined up with the location and was within a few weeks of other animal attack victims.

Okay, but they were pretty clearly animal attacks. He didn’t even know why he was suddenly going down this thought train. Wolf saliva and fur had been found all over those bodies and there were no footprints aside from the victims at any site. But shit dude, it was really fucking weird that there were at least three times they had gone backpacking and people died.

“Or, consider this Stiles, maybe they’re just pretty lucky that they haven’t been killed,” Stiles said to himself and shook his head. He was being stupid. They camped a lot and there were only so many spots that people went in the area. The weeks that weather was nice, hundreds of people were probably on those trails. 

“Wanna go outside, Derek?” Stiles closed his laptop and walked back out to the hallway. “I’ll give you a slice of cheese if you don’t make me go out with you.”

The type of dog that was mixed with wolf that Derek was had to have been a husky or something, only they had the blue eyes and sassy looks that he was a master of. He shook out his coat and let out a chuffing noise that Stiles took as accepting the deal. 

“There’s a good dog,” Stiles laughed as Derek padded in front of him, back towards the kitchen.

Yeah, he was being stupid. Stiles let the suspicions and thoughts of animal attacks fall out of his mind as he watched Derek run out into the yard and immediately flop down into a snow drift. 


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles didn’t exactly forget his concerns over seeing the maps, but over the next couple of weeks they faded to the back of his mind. Honestly, seeing Chris and Peter damn near every day at the coffee shop helped to reassure him that what he had been seeing was just a coincidence. It wasn’t that they were normal, no they were pretty damn weird, but it was a good type of weird. It was the type of weird where Peter was an asshole but there was something endearing in it and Chris seemed like the type of guy to do D.A.R.E. lectures at middle schools but would slip in something about stopping by the dispensary at his lunch.

For lack of a better way to describe them, they were just comforting. Stiles felt at ease around them, like he could just be himself. They’d light him up when he said some dumb shit but it felt similar to how it was between him and his friends back in Beacon Hills.

“Why’d you guys decide to start a coffee shop up here anyway?” Stiles asked one evening, the shop had closed half an hour earlier but he was still hanging out as Chris and Peter wrapped everything up. “You’d probably have gotten better traffic in Beacon Hills.”

“I wanted to get out of the family business but I like managing things and Peter has always liked cooking,” Chris said with a shrug. He was wiping down tables and counters, sleeves rolled up and showing off muscular forearms. “Seemed like the perfect way for both of us to do something we liked. As for the location, there’s too many bad memories for the both of us back in Beacon Hills. My sister was killed in those animal attacks a while back and Peter… well, I’m sure you understand. We could have set up anywhere, making a profit isn’t really the goal here, we’ve got enough money for a few lifetimes, but this is just pretty central for a lot of good hiking and camping.”

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Stiles frowned. He remembered those animal attacks. They happened the same year the Hale house burned down, his sophomore year of high school, almost a decade ago. Officially it had been ruled that all of the victims were killed by a mountain lion but Stiles remembered reading the report on one of the victims and how they had found wolf fur on him.

Chris let out a breath and sighed deeply, his eyes looked like they were staring somewhere far off in the distance. “Honestly, I think it might have been for the best. She was… extreme, in the family business we sometimes had to hurt people but she went too far, hurt innocent people just because they could hurt people in the future.” He paused and tossed a wet rag over to Stiles. “Help clean up and then you can ask more questions.”

“Wow, taskmaster over here,” Stiles replied. He stood up and started wiping down the table he had been sitting down at. “Still, even if she went too far, it must have hurt.”

Chris pursed his lips and stared down at the table he was working on. “Finding out the truth about her hurt more I think. It made me reevaluate a lot of things in my life. Peter and I packed up and moved out here not much after her funeral.” He looked back up and Stiles felt his heart break at the look in his eyes. 

“Being in Beacon Hills is hard for me too,” Stiles admitted. He really scrubbed at the table so he could avoid meeting Chris’s intense gaze. “My mom died when I was just about to start middle school and it was rough, really rough. I built up good memories there afterwards and I love my dad, but sometimes I just look at places she took me as a kid and have a panic attack.”

“And somehow The Silver Bullet has become the meeting place for the Fucked Up By Beacon Hills support group,” Chris said with a sad smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

Stiles had to look away from Chris again but this time it was for a completely different reason. It was so fucked up but he just looked gorgeous like that, Stiles knew that he shouldn’t be lusting over a married dude but both Chris and Peter made that impossible. They just were so handsome, like it was illegal how they were exactly his type. 

God, he was so totally fucked, wasn’t he?

“But hey, turning things to a less depressing topic, Peter and I were gonna go camping this weekend but most of the parks are temporarily closed. It means we have some free time, so if you’d want to come over for dinner, we’d be happy to have you.”

Stiles furrowed his brows. “Closed? What happened? But, uh, yeah I’d love to come over. I gotta keep working on my evil plan of getting Derek to let me pet him.”

Chris laughed. “Good luck with that, he only lets Peter pet him.” He paused and the humor faded from his eyes. “There was another animal attack and the park service is starting to get worried. The number of attacks is adding up and they want to catch whatever animal has been doing this.”

“Where was the attack?” Stiles asked. He thought back to the maps. Just over two weeks had passed since Chris and Peter’s last trip, a similar timeframe to the other trips that coincided with animal attacks. The train of thought was stupid, they were clearly animal attacks and Chris and Peter were pretty obviously not animals, but he couldn’t help it.

“About twenty miles north of here,” Chris replied. He walked back to the counter and tossed his rag in the sink before he grabbed the broom and started to sweep up the floor. “I think it was a group of like three people this time, I’m not sure. It just hit the news this afternoon.”

Stiles frowned. Where had they gone backpacking? He couldn’t remember but if it lined up with their trail… well, it would be a hell of a coincidence. He knew it was dumb but he wanted to look more into this when he got home, if only to put his mind at ease. His job would allow him access to the reports and that meant photos. Maybe seeing the proof that they were clearly animal attacks would make him stop with his line of thinking. It wasn’t fair to Chris or Peter for him to be accusing them of murder, even if it was only in his mind.

Stiles pursed his lips. “You guys are lucky you haven’t been attacked yet, it might be a good thing that the parks are closing for now. Don’t want to push your luck too far, I guess.”

Chris snorted and flashed a grin. “The concern is adorable, it really is. But we’re not too worried, both of us have been doing this for decades. I’ve got human ingenuity and a gun.”

Stiles raised a skeptical brow. “That sounds like the sort of thing you hear someone in a slasher flick say right before they’re killed.”

Chris’s grin widened and he winked at Stiles. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

——

Three days later, Stiles was sitting in his Jeep with the finest bottle of wine Kroger’s middle shelf could provide and worry was churning in his stomach. The reports hadn’t made him feel any better. There was just something about the photos that seemed wrong, he couldn’t put his finger on it but it was just unnatural.

He was fairly certain that no human could have murdered those people, but no animal could have either. They were brutalized and individually it could have seemed random, but when he started comparing all of the victims to each other, he saw patterns. The attacks were calculated, or at least they seemed to be. There were bites and claw marks all over the bodies, that made sense for a rabid animal attack, but the locations seemed carefully chosen.

There was one lethal spot clawed out on each victim, but only ever one. Every other wound, while deep and brutal, was in non-lethal spots. It was like whatever was attacking these people was trying to draw out their suffering until it finally killed them.

No animal was that sadistic.

Stiles hissed out a breath as he left his Jeep. Even with all of that, the problem still boiled down to the fact that there was no evidence to point to a human being the perpetrator. 

He was waiting on his dad to send him the reports from the animal attacks in Beacon Hills from a decade back. He just wanted to know if the attack patterns were the same. If they were, he was almost certain Chris and Peter were connected in some way. He didn’t know how, fuck, he couldn’t even explain why. There would be just too many connections for it to be a coincidence at that point. Even if there was no evidence for a conviction, he needed to know.

But what then? What good would knowing do if it turned out he was right? The only connections he had were maps on a wall where a few lined up with some of the animal attack dates. Chris and Peter were both clean as a whistle, neither of them had any marks on their records, not even a parking ticket. 

Plus, Stiles really didn’t want them to be murderers. There had to be an explanation for everything that didn’t end with Chris and Peter murdering campers for fun.

Anxiety tensed all of the muscles in his body as he knocked on their front door. What was he supposed to do? Search for evidence right under their noses?

“Hey, Stiles.” Peter opened the door and leaned on the doorframe. “Give me your offering and I’ll see if you’re welcome inside.”

“Will this appease your godly taste buds, oh great Peter?” Stiles asked as he held out the bottle of mid tier wine to Peter. He shoved his worries back for the moment, he could work on figuring out just what was going on later. It was easier to push back any concerns when he was with Peter, there was just something about him that made Stiles relax. It was the same situation with Chris.

That was the problem with it all. How was he supposed to figure out if they were serial killers if he couldn’t be around them without swooning?

Peter looked just as unimpressed as Stiles figured that he would be at the wine. The expression on his face would have been the same if Stiles had presented him a piece of roadkill on a silver platter. “I don’t know why I had any semblance of hope in me that you would bring something drinkable.”

Stiles made a face. “This is more drinkable than what I usually do. I usually go for bottom shelf boxed wine.” He didn’t care for wine really. If he was gonna drink, he was gonna drink to get drunk and a handle of vodka was better for that than a bottle of wine. 

“Philistine.” Peter took the bottle of wine from him and held it like it was poisonous. “Luckily for you, I expected something like this and have a wine that will actually pair with dinner.”

“Luckily for me? I couldn’t give a shit about pairing wine with food. It’s honestly all the same to me.”

Peter looked like Stiles had physically wounded him. “My respect for you is dwindling by the second, please shut up before it reaches zero.” He turned and started to walk back inside, pausing just slightly for Stiles to catch up to him.

“That’s impossible and you know it,” Stiles laughed and started to feel at ease despite himself. He could see a black flash of fur out of the corner of his eyes, Derek trying to carefully check out the situation he assumed. 

Peter quirked a brow. “You sure about that?” 

“Asshole,” Stiles replied, swatting Peter’s upper arm, earning a low growl from Derek.

“It’s fine, Derek,” Peter said and lowered a hand as he snapped, calling Derek towards him. Derek gave Stiles a sour look and his ears twitched. “He’d have to try harder than that if he wanted to actually hurt me.” It was kinda weird how Peter used the same voice to talk to his dog that he used to talk to people, but then again he couldn’t exactly imagine Peter  _ or  _ Chris baby-talking anything.

“He’s a smart dog,” Stiles said as he watched Peter scratch the ruff of Derek’s neck. Peter seemed to be extra careful to avoid the bubbled, flame scarred skin. “I still can’t get over his size.”

Seriously, Derek was huge. He was bigger than the biggest great dane Stiles had ever seen, easily the size of a pony. Were all wolf dogs that way or was Derek a special case?

“Would you believe it if I told you I’ve seen some bigger than him?” Peter asked, looking back at Stiles. There was a far away, almost mournful look in his eyes. “And he is smart, it’s why we’ve been working so hard for him. One day we want to try and get him back to how he had been before the fire.”

Fuck, there was no way Peter could have been faking that level of care for Derek. He genuinely loved that dog and that really threw a wrench into the idea of Peter and Chris being cold blooded serial killers. It relieved Stiles, honestly, he didn’t want them to be killers and he’d gladly take any shred of evidence that aligned with that.

——

Several hours later, Stiles was stuffed and pleasantly drunk. He hadn’t expected Chris to break out the bourbon when Peter brought out a cheesecake but he wasn’t complaining. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the bourbon, Stiles would have probably stayed at the level of just tipsy, but the liquor pushed him over the edge. He wasn’t exactly a lightweight but over the past few months his alcohol consumption had lowered to mostly just a couple beers a week.

Chris was definitely feeling the liquor too, Stiles could see it in his eyes and felt it in the way that Chris grew much more tactile. He was always fairly physical, but the alcohol seemed to amp that up in him. Peter, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be affected at all. Stiles didn’t peg him for a heavyweight but apparently the man could handle his alcohol.

“How about a more official tour of the house?” Peter asked as he put the bourbon back on the shelf. Stiles stared mournfully at the liquor, he could have gone for another glass. Well, at least present Stiles could have. Future Stiles would probably thank Peter for not letting present Stiles give him even more of a hangover.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Stiles said. He hadn’t looked into most of the house when he had been there the last time, mostly he had stuck around the main living area and the guest room they put him up in. The most out of the way he had gone was the small office with the wall of maps.

He could definitely feel the liquor running through his veins as he stood up from the comfortable armchair. It wasn’t debilitating, no he probably would have needed three or four more drinks for that, but it was enough to make his movements feel slow and floaty. 

“Easy there,” Chris rested a steadying hand on the small of his back. He leaned in close enough that Stiles could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Fuck. Stiles really wanted to kiss him. Hell, he wanted to kiss Peter too. 

“We gotta get you to handle your liquor better,” Chris laughed. He didn’t take his hand off of Stiles’ back, actually he rubbed along Stiles’ spine with his thumb.

Peter looked at Chris and then towards Stiles with an interested expression. “I could help with that, you know.”

“Oh? Do you have a super secret Hale family… uh, secret on handling liquor?” Stiles asked. 

Peter’s lips quirked up in amusement. He walked towards Chris and Stiles, stopping close to Stiles, closer than what would be considered an acceptable distance. Well, an acceptable distance to anyone whose mental state was not currently impaired by booze. “Would you like me to show you? I could gift it to you, teach you everything I know,” He said, voice low and almost hypnotic. 

As Stiles was opening his mouth to say  _ yes, of course, anything, _ Chris sharply cut in. “Not yet, Peter.”

“You’re no fun at all, Christopher,” Peter replied and rolled his eyes. He stared at Stiles and for the briefest of seconds, his eyes seemed to flash a bright crimson. But before Stiles could process it, or even be fully certain that he saw it, his eyes were back to their normal icy blue.

“Come on then, you’ve already been there, but we’ll start in the guest wing,” Peter said after a moment. He turned around and started to walk, leaving Stiles confused. What exactly had he meant? And what did Chris mean by not yet?

“I’m starting to worry that you two are like cartel kingpins or something,” Stiles said, lips pursed into a frown as he looked at Chris. 

“Not quite,” Chris replied with a low chuckle. He nudged Stiles forward as he began to follow Peter. “I think it’s just important for us to keep up an air of mystery.”

“Your air of mystery kinda sucks dude.” Stiles wanted to add,  _ it’s kinda making me think that you two are serial killers or something _ , but he restrained himself.

“Where’s the fun in telling you all of our secrets right away?” Chris asked. He was still chuckling, like there was a joke Stiles wasn’t in on.”Peter and I have a complicated history together — quite similar to Romeo and Juliet in a way. Just, you know, without the ritual suicide.”

Okay, Stiles wasn’t exactly sure how that connected to all of their secrets, but sure, Chris was also intoxicated, Stiles could allow him a few tangents. 

“My family was more vehemently against our partnership than his, though his family wasn’t happy either. We learned to keep secrets to protect ourselves, and I suppose we still hold onto that habit.”

“So, what sort of secrets are you keeping then?”  _ And are they about the bodies found in the woods _ ?

Chris flashed a grin at him. “As politely as you asked, I think those are things you’ll just have to wait to find out.” He moved his hand from the small of Stiles’ back to his side and squeezed it gently. “I’m sure we can manage to keep your interest in the meantime.”

“And how exactly will you do that?” Stiles asked. He nearly stumbled over the edge of a rug but Chris’s arm around his waist kept him steady.

“Oh we have plenty of ways,” Peter cut in, stopping in his tracks. He turned around and grinned dangerously. “Let’s look at a few of the more interesting rooms in the house and then you can see one of the ways.”

Peter paused and tilted his head as he looked at Chris, as if looking for his approval. Chris gave it to him with a rumbling,“I suppose we can do that. You think you can handle another surprise?”

“You two are going to be the death of me, I swear,” Stiles groaned. 

Peter laughed loudly. “Don’t die on us, we like you too much for that.” He winked as he opened the door behind him, revealing another guest room turned office.

“I’ve always had an interest in folktales and the monsters of myth, so over the years I’ve collected a good number of antique books about them,” Chris said. He walked into the room with Stiles and appraised the large bookshelf that seemed to be the focus of the office. It wasn’t as filled with things like the outdoorsy office, it actually seemed more like a practical office. There was a large desk on a wall with a computer that was humming in its sleep.

“This is actually something that’s been in my family since at least the seventeen hundreds.” Chris released Stiles to walk to the bookshelf and pull out a book that was centered in the display. “Fairly interesting piece of history, though unless you can read Archaic Latin, it’s not really light reading material.”

“Can you read Archaic Latin?” Stiles asked. 

Chris raised a brow. “What do you think?”

“I’m taking that as a no. What’s it about, even if you can’t read it I’m sure the general gist of it’s been passed down.”

“It’s a bestiary,” Chris replied. He set the book back down on the shelf and pulled another out. “It covers a lot of monsters of myth. This is a similar text, just more recent and actually in english.” He handed the book over to Stiles who started flipping through it.

“Huh, I didn’t realize you were into this sort of thing,” Stiles replied. He skimmed through the book, it was probably from the early twentieth century and notes from a previous owner written down in french in the margins. “You got anything on Mothman in there?”

“Not quite,” Chris said with an amused grin. “Modern American cryptids aren’t really in my wheelhouse, but I do have some references on older folk monsters from indigenous people throughout North and South America. Most of those are one of a kind journals. Pretty cool, right?”

“Yeah, that is actually.” One of the last records in the bestiary Stiles was skimming through was on werewolves. He paused on that page, he wasn’t quite sure why. There was just something about the illustration that gripped him. It didn’t look like any modern interpretation of a werewolf he had ever seen, both more human and more monstrous at the same time.

There were more notes on that page than any other, too. Almost every margin was taken up by scrawlings in french. Stiles was curious about what those notes said because the body of the text didn’t seem to be much different than the rest of the bestiary. Just a general description and some other “facts” about the monster.

“Now, this is probably the coolest part of my collection.” Chris took the bestiary from Stiles before he could ask about the french notes and walked back to the bookshelf. He pulled an antique gun in a glass case from the shelf and carefully brought it over to Stiles.

“It’s a French flintlock pistol, we think it’s from the mid seventeenth century. There are a few different stories about it, all surrounding a duel between brothers. My favorite is where one of the brothers had been given an inhuman amount of strength and was possessed by a beast. He had turned rabid under the light of the moon and had slaughtered an entire village. Rather than let his brother live to kill again, the other brother shot and killed him. It was the last bullet ever fired from this gun.”

“Huh, that’s neat,” Stiles said as he inspected the gun. He was afraid to touch the case, scared that even that contact would somehow destroy the gun. “What’s the actual story?”

“Who’s to say that isn’t the actual story,” Peter said with amusement coloring his tone. He walked over to Stiles until he was just on the edge of too close and paused as he inspected the gun. “Have you ever heard of The Beast of Gévaudan, Stiles?”

“Can’t say I have,” Stiles replied.

“Look it up when you get the chance, Christopher’s family has some ties to it.” Peter picked up the glass case to more closely inspect the gun. “You see these scratches, Stiles? They look like claw marks, don’t they?”

Stiles narrowed his eyes as he looked at the scratches. “Honestly they just look like somebody brought a knife to a gun fight,” he said. He couldn’t imagine any claws managing to scratch the polished metal that deeply. A knife or a sword would make much more sense, especially considering the time period.

Peter laughed softly in a way that was more a puff of air from his nose than anything. “Perhaps that’s the story, though a monster makes for a much more entertaining tale in my opinion.”

“Agreed.” Chris took the gun from Peter to put it back in its place on the bookshelf. “I can’t let you take any of the books or journals from here, most of them are too old and all of them are too valuable, but if you’d like to look through any of them, let me know. True or not, folktales are fascinating ways to learn about different cultures.”

“Don’t be a dick and murder a bunch of people and your brother won’t have to shoot you in the middle of town. Yeah, that’s a pretty good lesson,” Stiles said. 

“Smartass,” Chris said with a laugh. “Ready for the next room?” With everything back in place on the shelf, he turned around and walked back over to Stiles. Again, he wrapped his arm around Stiles’ waist, steadying him as they headed out of the office.

“Now this room is a bit more boring, but much more practical,” Peter said as he opened the door to the next office. Stiles knew what was in there already, it was the room with the wall of maps. He was curious as to what their explanation would be for them and if their latest trip would be on the wall.

“Since Christopher and I are outdoorsy, we try to keep plenty of references on hand,” Peter explained further as he walked in. Stiles and Chris followed closely behind him, but when Stiles looked to the wall of maps, he froze in his tracks.

The wall was still covered in maps, all of the exact same locations he saw the previous time. But there was one key difference between what he saw now versus what he had seen before. None of the maps had any markings on them. No dates, no highlighted trails, and no circled camping spots.

“Stiles, are you okay?” Chris asked.

“The maps, they’re different,” Stiles said and immediately swore at himself in his mind. If he had been sober, he wouldn’t have reacted at all, much less said anything. “I— you guys had left the light on in here the last time so I had gone to shut it off. I saw the wall of maps and was interested in them, I thought it was neat that you guys decided to decorate with trips you’ve taken.”

“These were always the maps on the wall, I think you might be confused,” Peter said. He motioned for Stiles to join him closer to the wall so Stiles did. “We added the map of our last camping trip, yeah, but most of these have been there for months.”

Stiles blinked as he stared at the wall and he felt a small ache at the base of his neck. He absentmindedly scratched at it and really inspected the maps more closely. They really did look like they had been there for ages, whatever Chris and Peter used to plaster the maps to the wall didn’t seem like it was fresh. But he was sure he had seen marked maps all over the wall.

At least he thought he had. The longer he stared at the maps, the less certain he was. Maybe he had seen other maps somewhere else in the house and his intoxicated brain was confusing his memories.

“Maybe we should cut the tour short and let you get some sleep,” Peter said. He was inspecting his nails and cleaning out some dirt from under his first few fingers with his thumb. “Christopher can grab some sweatpants for you if you’d like; I doubt you’re in any shape to drive yourself home.”

“I— yeah, sure, that sounds good.” Stiles wasn’t sure what was going on. Fuck, he was fully doubting his memories now. He couldn’t tell if Chris and Peter were really hiding something or if maybe he had misinterpreted something. The ache in his neck became a throbbing at his temples and he squeezed his eyes shut to try and handle the pain.

What the hell was happening?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two and I've already deviated from the outline I had written LOL I'm literally the worst


	3. Chapter 3

When Stiles awoke the next morning, his head was pounding and his stomach rolled in nausea. Fuck, he didn’t think he drank that much but his body told him otherwise. He groaned loudly and screwed his eyes shut in an attempt to stop the world from spinning around him.

With his eyes shut, Stiles tried to remember what exactly had happened the night before. He remembered dinner, then Chris breaking out the bourbon, and then something about going on a tour of the house, then nothing. The harder he tried to remember, the worse the pounding in his head got. Goddamn, man, he never had a hangover this bad before. 

He couldn’t even remember the last time he got blackout drunk, but he was certain there had been far more alcohol involved than a bottle of wine and a few glasses of bourbon. It raised the question of if Chris and Peter had roofied him, but why the hell would they have roofied him if they were just gonna let him wake up at their house?

The only answer he could think of was that he just really had lost his alcohol tolerance and that the bourbon was strong as hell. He hoped he hadn’t said or done anything embarrassing. Scott had so many stories he could tell of Stiles blacking out back in high school and doing the dumbest shit possible. Probably the worst had been when he literally sobbed on Erica’s lap about a YouTube video he saw once about a dog rescue... for several hours.

It took a lot of effort, but Stiles forced himself to sit up. It made his head swim and he winced in pain as the base of his neck twinged in pain.

The base of his neck? The fuck? He brought a hand to where the ache was the worst and felt two small scabs. When he touched them, not only did the pain in his neck intensify, but his headache also got so bad that he felt like he was going to vomit. It was an absolutely overwhelming sort of pain unlike any he had ever experienced before in his life.

He gasped and collapsed back on the bed. That level of pain wasn’t normal for scabs as small as those. What the hell could he have done to himself?

Or perhaps, what could Chris and Peter have done? Suspicions he had set aside the previous night came back in force. He tried desperately to remember what had gone on the night before but it was like a brick wall in his mind. It was like a physical barrier in his mind, one that wouldn’t let him past the moment Peter suggested a tour of the house.

Stiles clenched his jaw as he tried to brute force his memories despite the overwhelming crescendo of pain it caused. But unfortunately, just like slamming himself into a brick wall repeatedly, trying to kool-aid man through, he wasn’t able to break through the mental block through sheer force alone. All it left him with was frustration and a brutal headache. 

“Stiles? Everything okay?” Chris opened the door to the guest room and walked in. There was concern in his frown.

“The back of my neck— what happened? It hurts so bad.”

Chris’s frown tightened. Was that guilt in his expression? Or was it something darker? Stiles couldn’t quite tell if he was trying to project his own fears onto Chris or if there was something going on.

“Last night when we were showing you around you tripped on the edge of a rug, you were holding a glass of water at the time and it shattered. I thought we had gotten all of the pieces of glass out, but it’s possible we missed something. If you want to lay down on your stomach, I can take a look.”

Stiles reached for the back of his neck and paused. He felt like he should have remembered something about that, but he couldn’t recall anything at all. “I— shouldn’t we just go to the hospital?” If he hit his head hard enough to lose memories, there was something wrong. Add the shards of glass that were apparently still in his body and yeah, a hospital trip didn’t sound unreasonable to him.

“Would you rather pay a thousand bucks for this? I have some field medic training from when I was in the marines. Getting some glass out isn’t much different than shrapnel.” Chris raised an eyebrow. “Lay down and I’ll be right back, I’ll just need to get some antiseptic and some tweezers.”

There wasn’t anything that sounded like a lie in what Chris was saying. He sounded just as sure and confident as he did about everything. But, still, Stiles had some small feeling that Chris was lying to him. It wasn’t rational, there was no reason to assume anything had happened other than what Chris told him.

Like, what Chris said made sense. He could see the bandaids and small cuts all over his body. He could certainly feel how tender his head was. There was evidence that stretched from his toes, but despite all of that, the paranoid part of him insisted that Chris was lying. He couldn’t forget his earlier suspicions, though he couldn’t exactly remember why he had those suspicions. Something about… maps, but what maps? 

He was suspicious over maps he had seen but he flat out couldn’t actually remember why that was what made him suspicious. Yeah, they had maps of the surrounding forests in their house but they went backpacking all the time. Maps didn’t make someone a murderer.

Fuck, what was wrong with him? Despite the rational side of him trying to calm himself down, he still couldn’t force away the paranoia. He just… he was certain there was something going on. Even if he didn’t understand why he felt this, his instincts were screaming at him to run, to arrest them, that they were going to kill him.

“You look nervous, Stiles. Is everything okay?” Somehow, Peter had snuck into the guest room, right to Stiles’ bedside, without Stiles hearing him.

“I— I’m fine, my neck just hurts.”

Peter hummed and ran his thumb along his fingernails. For a brief moment, Stiles’ eyes played tricks on him and Peter’s nails looked more like claws, or even talons, but when he blinked they were back to blunt, human nails. “I happen to know some good techniques for pain mitigation, if you’d like me to help out until Chris gets back.”

Stiles’ heart thumped in his chest. What sort of pain mitigation did Peter mean? Fuck, did he discover something last night? Were they going to kill him?

“You realize we’re not mad at you, right?” Peter looked down at him and raised his brows. “Accidents happen, it’s not your fault you tripped in the wrong spot. We took care of the mess, no harm now foul.” He paused and let out a quick laugh. “Well, no harm aside from the bodily harm you faced with the broken glass. But it’s minimal, you don’t even need stitches.”

“Why can’t I remember anything from last night? I didn’t drink enough to black out, did I really hit my head that hard?” Stiles finally asked after a moment’s pause. “It’s— it’s like there’s something preventing me from remembering. Did you and Chris do something to me?”

Peter cocked his head and narrowed his eyes in interest. “Why would you think we did anything to you?”

“I— look—“ Stiles stammered.

Peter cut him off with a laugh. “Relax, I’m just giving you a hard time. I promise you, we didn’t drug you or anything like that. I think that the alcohol mixed with the shock of falling into broken glass and hitting your head must have messed with you a little. If things are still fuzzy later on, you might want to get checked out for a concussion.”

Peter sat down on the bed next to Stiles and grabbed his hand. “Now, Christopher is still grabbing his stuff to make sure there’s no glass in your neck and I’ve hopefully alleviated your worries. So, how about you let me take care of your pain?”

Before he could say anything, Peter moved his hands to Stiles’ shoulders and pressed down. The relief was almost instant, making Stiles gasp out.

“How are you doing that?” Stiles asked, eyes wide.

“My family had a few tricks, it’s a pressure point thing. Until Chris gets that glass out of your neck, you’ll still be hurting, but until then, I’ll just stay here.” The pressure of Peter’s hands on his shoulders was firm and Stiles felt himself relaxing under the touch despite himself. 

“Do you really not remember hurting yourself last night?” Peter asked. There was a certain edge to his tone that Stiles couldn’t quite place.

“I can’t remember pretty much anything after you offered up a tour,” Stiles replied slowly.

“Hm, shame, Christopher showed you some really interesting family heirlooms. Oh, and you sucked my dick.”

Stiles’ whole body tensed and he whipped his head around, despite the wave of pain that caused. “I did what now?”

Peter flashed a grin and laughed loudly. “Joking, joking. Though, if you wanted to offer up your services, who would I be to refuse such a pretty boy?”

“I really can’t leave you alone, can I, Peter?” Chris asked dryly as he walked into the room, first aid kit under one arm, bottle of rubbing alcohol under the other.

“I swear to god I wasn’t going to do anything,” Stiles stammered. He felt himself flushing from his face down to his fucking chest.

“Relax, Stiles. Peter just apparently didn’t get the memo that any dick sucking has to wait until after there’s no glass in your neck.” Chris had that look on his face, the one where Stiles couldn’t tell if he was fucking with him or not.

“Are you serious?”

“I wonder if I am,” Chris replied cryptically with a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. “Now, let’s see what’s going on with your neck.”

——

Stiles stared at the chunks of glass in his hand with a slight frown. He certainly had felt Chris pull them out of his neck but… there was some part of him that felt like the glass wasn’t the reason for the small wounds. It just— fuck, it just didn’t seem right. Yes, all the evidence supported what Chris and Peter said happened, but there had to be more to the story. He set down the pieces of glass onto his counter with a sigh. All he wanted was answers but what he ended up getting was just more questions.

Still sighing, he grabbed his laptop and moved over to his couch. What he needed to do was to stop convincing himself two good men were evil and to just watch some Twitch streams or something. Nothing took your mind off of wondering if the two hot coffee shop owners were actually serial killers quite like watching a man spend eleven thousand dollars on Yu-Gi-Oh cards and open them on stream.

Well, at least that was what he _planned_ on doing. Seriously, he had all the intentions of trying to get himself to stop being so fucking paranoid and relax, but he had left a tab open on his web browser to his email and he saw he had one high priority email waiting for him. It was his dad, sending him the report he had asked for on the death of Kate Argent.

Stiles paused as he hovered his cursor over the unread email. He could stop there, delete the email and go on with his life, or he could continue to support his… well, his delusions, if he was being honest with himself. The smart choice would have been to ignore the email, but he had never been known to make the smart choice.

Swearing at himself under his breath, Stiles clicked on the email his dad sent and downloaded the attached files. He told himself that he still could turn back, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He had to know what killed Kate Argent, needed to know if the attack patterns were the same.

With a few clicks, Stiles opened up all of the documents and printed them out. Apparently his dad had sent him the files of all of those animal attacks, not just Kate. That was actually good, it would really solidify if it was a pattern or not. 

No one in the department had been able to fully tell which sort of animal had been behind the attacks. Wolf hair had been found at some of the scenes but experts claimed that the wound patterns didn’t match the way wolves attacked, it seemed more similar to that of a mountain lion. 

There was actually footage from one of the scenes, a video store. Stiles remembered that attack, Lydia had been there— not in the store but in the car, waiting for Jackson when he was still pretending to be straight and they were dating. The attack had fucked Jackson up pretty badly, mentally, not physically. The only thing that happened to him was getting a cheap shelf dropped on him.

Jackson had sworn up and down that there was no way that thing had been a mountain lion and nobody believed him at the time. Stiles had actually given him some hell for it, laughed at him along with everybody else.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Looking at stills from the footage, a name flashed in Stiles’ mind, The Beast of Gévaudan. Along with the names came flashes of mental pictures, of books with yellowed, time worn pages, filled words in foreign languages. He didn’t know where those mental images were from, couldn’t remember where or when he had seen them. 

With shaking fingers, Stiles went to Google and searched for The Beast and opened almost every result on the first page. The story felt familiar, like he had heard it not long ago. But what felt most familiar to him was on the final tab he had open, it was an ink drawing of a bestial creature. The only color was added with brilliant red ink that stood out against the stark blacks and whites of the page, creating blood soaked claws and crimson eyes.

“ _Shit_ ,” Stiles swore in pain as his headache from earlier came back in a blaze of overwhelming pain. He hunched over in his chair and squeezed his eyes shut. Along with the pain came a vague memory of words, only a fragment of a sentence, ‘ _Christopher’s family has some ties to it_.’ Ties to what, exactly?

When his headache subsided, Stiles went from Google to where he would be able to more easily look into Chris’s family. Were they tied to organized crime? Maybe The Beast of Gévaudan was a codename for a hitman.

Few results came up for the Argents in terms of crime. They were clean, only a few speeding tickets here and there. Interestingly enough, Kate Argent was the one with the highest rap sheet. She had a few run-ins with the law when drunk, bar fights and the like. But what he was most interested in was a flag that came up shortly before her death. She had purchased some regulated chemicals in an unusual amount.

Stiles grabbed a pen and pad of paper and quickly made note of the chemicals. He wasn’t exactly sure of what they were, chemistry had never been his strong suit. 

Wait.

It might not have been his strong suit, but he knew someone whose strong suit it was.

Stiles: _Do u know what these could be used for?_

A response came a few minutes later.

Lydia: _Lol did a date go really badly or something? Do I need to come up there to hide a body?_

Stiles: _??? What ???_

Lydia: _If you combine those you get a crazy accelerant. It’s nearly impossible to trace_

Stiles: _Like for arson?_

Lydia: _No, for making your car go super fast_

Lydia: _Yes for arson_

Lydia: _What’s going on?_

Stiles: _Holy shit_

Stiles: _Ok thnks I need to look into this I think I know what happened at the Hale house_

His phone buzzed with more texts from Lydia but Stiles forced himself to ignore it. Kate Argent bought all the ingredients to set a house ablaze and a few weeks later she died. Fuck, Stiles really wanted access to her phone records but they hadn’t been pulled in the initial investigation of her death.

Stiles spread out all of the papers he had in front of him and stared at the names of the victims. There was no way the attack on Kate had been a random animal attack. It could have been a cleaner for the Argents, tying up a loose end after she went rogue. If that attack hadn’t been random, he doubted the other victims were randomly attacked too.

He popped the names into the database and bingo, all of them had rap sheets a mile long. It wasn’t evidence enough to put someone in court, but it was enough for him to build up a theory. Kate either hired or blackmailed all of the victims to help her burn the Hale house to the ground along with the entire family minus Peter inside. The only one that likely had nothing to do with causing the fire was the arson investigator who declared it an electrical fire. But he was just as guilty as everyone else involved if he knowingly lied on the report.

So was Chris the cleaner for the Argents? Stiles stood up and scratched his jaw as he walked over to his living room and grabbed his cork board he used for casework. He pulled off the files he had pinned to it and set them in a neat pile before rolling the board over to his desk. He began pinning files and photos to the board and started to tie people and places together.

Pretty much every single Argent in the United States was a registered arms dealer or security consultant. Chris had been one too until he moved away from Beacon Hills. Was that from a place of guilt? 

And how did the Hales tie into all of this? He would have assumed that maybe Peter was their attorney but he had been a prosecutor. It didn’t wipe out the potential that he was a fixer for them but it was far more tentative than Stiles would like. Though… if he wasn’t a fixer, perhaps he had gotten dirt on Kate or the Argents in general that made her kill his family to send a message.

Stiles’ eyes widened as he stared at his board. Okay, okay, there was a potential that maybe Chris and Peter weren’t behind the killings. Maybe the Argents were sending people after the two of them, killing near where they knew the two of them would be as a threat or as a message. Most crime families didn’t like people leaving and there was a potential that they had taken their time in sending out their mail to the two of them.

Sitting back at his desk, Stiles quickly searched up all of the victims of the latest wave of attacks and printed out their files. None of them were angels it looked like, no charges stuck but all of them had been in court for various felonies at one time or another. They actually all had been charged with some form of murder. Maybe they had ties to the Argents. Of course, that hinged on the Argents actually being a crime family. It was entirely possible that Kate was just a single bad apple.

But if that was the case, why go after the Hales? That’s what didn’t really make much sense to Stiles. If Peter had dirt on Kate or the Argents, yeah, okay, kill the family. But if they were just a bunch of normal people, why kill another family? Chris had mentioned their families being something like Romeo and Juliet, but why?

Regardless of the family drama, if the Argents weren’t some big bad crime family, the other potential was that Chris and Peter saw themselves as vigilantes and went after murderers. The Hale house fire had been the catalyst for that, they murdered all responsible, and decided to keep at it. 

At this point, he was certain that none of these animal attacks were actually animal attacks. Looking at the photos of the bodies from Beacon Hills, they all had the exact same sort of wound pattern with only one fatal wound and plenty of non-fatal ones. Add that with a common thread running through all the victims, murder, or at least alleged murder, and unless wolves and mountain lions somehow learned about the American legal system, the killer was human.

So that left him with only one question; were the ones behind the killings Peter and Chris or were they targets and potential victims?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor stiles, life would be so much easier for him if he actually had the full deck of cards to play with in this game lol


	4. Chapter 4

So, he had a theory, two actually. That was good, really good. Now that he had solid theories, Stiles just needed to gather enough evidence for him to settle down on which one of the two was the reality of the situation. He was confident that he was onto something with what he was theorizing. It just made so much sense, even if there were massive holes he had to fill in.

But to find out what was going on, he couldn’t let anyone know. He needed to act like nothing was going on and see if he could get Chris or Peter to drop their guard enough to let him in on their secrets. Or maybe he just needed them to have him dog sit again, that would give him a chance to see if he could find any records that pointed him in the right direction.

Of course, there was always the option of him just flat out asking them if they were being tailed by a mob hitman or if they were just serial killers. Was it a good option? No, it was actually the worst option. But hey, he needed to cover his bases. If worse came to worse, he could just ask that question and probably end up dead.

Stiles pondered his options throughout the entirety of the day, weighing the risks and benefits of every single one. Honestly, pretty much every single option ended in him dying. The ones that didn’t one hundred percent end in him dying, well, he still pegged those with a fifty-fifty shot of him being found in the woods with his throat clawed out.

Fuck, that was another thing he didn’t understand. The more he thought about his options, the more questions he had. How exactly the killer made the attacks look so clearly like animal attacks was one question. A pretty important one, actually. 

He ran a hand down his face and let out a hissing sigh of frustration. He hadn’t been able to focus on his work at all, now with how he couldn’t get Chris and Peter out of his mind. It was already five and he had gotten fuck all accomplished thst day and he doubted the next day would be much better. 

Usually if he was struggling to get things done, he’d head to the cafe and focus in for a few hours. Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly work when the two people who were taking up your entire mind were the owners and sole staff of said cafe. But even if it didn’t help with his actual job, it would help with his own personal investigation. And look, if they were serial killers or targets of the mob, if he could take down the bad guy, in the end he was just doing his job as a FBI agent. 

So Stiles packed up his work laptop and headed out to The Silver Bullet. The entire drive over to the shop he was having to remind himself to act normally around Chris and Peter. That, sadly, had never been his strong suit. All throughout high school he constantly got busted by his dad for shit because as soon as he was conscious of how he was being perceived, he over acted to compensate. 

Even though he got better over the years, better wasn’t good enough. He had to be perfect now that he was in a life or death scenario. If he slipped up, he would die. It was as simple as that.

It wasn’t much of a comforting thought. Actually, it was quite sobering. He wasn’t a teenager playing police officer with his friends, stealing his dad’s case files and giving him suggestions on where he could find who stole Mrs. Robert’s family jewels. Hell, it wasn’t even like a FBI bust where he had a full team beside him. He was entirely alone against the unknown.

He sighed as he put his Jeep into reverse. When would his life ever be simple? Probably not, he’d never be so lucky. 

Stiles had to fight to keep himself from picking at the small scabs at the base of his neck as he drove to the coffee shop. He was terrible about picking at wounds, especially when he was anxious and good god was he anxious at the moment. It was hard not to be anxious when he was doing something as stupid as this.

What didn’t help the anxiety was the feeling like he was being watched. That fear was back at full force. Even though he knew that it was irrational, there weren’t spies everywhere, trying to wait for him to trip up. Hell, even if there were, they were working at the office trying to weasel drug lords and mob kingpins out of sentencing, not watching his every move because he had a theory he told nobody about.

But his entire body screamed at him that he was being watched.

It wasn’t that there was a car tailing him. Hell, he hadn’t seen even a biker or a jogger in miles. But even still, that feeling he had the entire day suddenly grew piercingly strong as he drove down the stretch of forested road that went from the FBI office towards the main part of town. The sun had already set for the evening thanks to the joys of winter and as he took a sharp turn in the road, he saw eyes flashing back at him, lit up by his headlights.

He slammed on his breaks at the sight of those eerie eyes. He was lucky that nobody was behind him, as it was he knew his Jeep couldn’t have been happy at the sudden stop he forced it into. Honestly, he didn’t know why he stopped, yeah the eyes were creepy but animals tended to stop and stare if a car was coming.

But something about the eyes just made his skin crawl. It was like everything in the world snapped towards them, making it clear to him that whatever those eyes belonged to, that was what was following him. Even though that was crazy, even though it was an animal and animals didn’t tail people for an entire day, Stiles was dead certain that the beast was the one watching him.

There was something like an afterglow to the eyes as Stiles pulled his Jeep off to the side of the road and shut it off. At least, that was the only explanation he could come up with as they seemed to glow red even after the headlights had turned off. He walked forwards, hand on his pistol in its holster. He needed to see what the creature was, if it was just some mountain lion that was trying to eat him or what.

Whatever the creature was, it stayed still as Stiles got within ten feet of it. He couldn’t make it out in the shadows of the bushes but those eyes glowed a piercing crimson with round, black pupils. 

“What are you?” Stiles asked quietly. It absolutely wasn’t a mountain lion, he was certain of it. Its snout was too long, it seemed more canine than anything. Were there wolves in this part of Washington? He didn’t actually know.

The beast stared at him and Stiles felt compelled to stare back. Irrational fear coursed through his body as the beast took a step forward and bared sharp, white teeth.

Stiles screamed at himself to move, to tighten his hand around his gun and pull it out, but he couldn’t even twitch. He had never frozen in fear before, not like this. Even when he was nearly mugged back in college, he was able to force himself to react. But this time, it was like something else was in control of his body and he just had to watch as whatever that beast was attacked him.

The beast was absolutely a wolf, that much was clear as it finally stepped out of the bushes. It was easily as big as Derek, if not bigger. Stiles felt himself tremble as it slowly walked towards him, growling low.

Stiles’ headache from the other day returned in force as it snarled at him. It stopped a few feet away from him, close enough that he could smell its earthy, animal scent. Once again, it looked up and stared at him and Stiles felt compelled to meet its stare. There was something intelligent in those eyes, an intelligence deeper than any common beast. The longer he held its gaze, the worse the pounding in his head got.

When the wolf’s low growl turned into a bone shaking roar, the headache got so intense that Stiles collapsed to the ground and vomited up the contents of his stomach, tears streaming from his eyes. He was overwhelmed by the terror that roar filled him with. It was like nothing else he had ever felt, primal and all consuming.

As its roar faded away, the wolf began to circle around him, no longer snarling or growling. Despite its massive size, its steps were light and silent. Stiles was only able to tell that it was walking around at all because it would disappear from his view and then slowly come back into sight.

Then, the weirdest thing of all happened. After some time of circling around him, it brought its muzzle down to the back of his neck and ran a long tongue down across it. Again and again, it… it groomed him? Stiles couldn’t come up with a better word to explain what the wolf was doing. After the snarling and the baring of teeth, it was like him collapsing to the ground triggered something almost akin to affection in the wolf.

The grooming wasn’t any less terrifying than the snarling, though. Stiles couldn’t forget about the claws on the massive paws or the giant, sharp teeth scant centimeters away from the thin skin of his neck. 

After some time, his salvation arrived in the form of a SUV slowly making the turn around the bend, flooding the area in light. It came to a stop as the driver likely noticed him lying there in a pool of his own vomit, spooned by a gigantic, killer dog. 

The wolf stopped licking him and stood up as the driver’s side door of the SUV opened up. Stiles couldn’t see any details of the driver, blinded by the headlights. But he heard a familiar voice call out.

“Stiles?” Chris jogged forward, making the wolf run back into the woods. “Jesus, Stiles, are you okay?”

The pounding headache and fear subsided, but Stiles still couldn’t make his body respond as he stared up at Chris. “What are you doing here?” He managed to ask. But after the mind-numbing terror of the wolf, he couldn’t find himself to be as afraid as he should have been at Chris just so happening to stumble across him.

Chris frowned as he helped Stiles to his feet. “You didn’t come to the shop like you said you would. After a bit, I tried calling and you didn’t pick up. These roads can get nasty in the winter so Peter and I wanted to make sure that nothing happened.”

“Seems like Christopher was right to have worried — he was like a mother hen at the shop.” Peter walked up behind Chris. It was a bit weird, Stiles hadn’t heard the car door open. “That wolf seemed to have taken a liking to you. If we hadn’t come, he might have taken you to join his pack.” Peter flashed his teeth as he chuckled at his own joke.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Chris ignored Peter and looked down at the puddle of vomit on the ground. Stiles felt his ears heat up as he realized the entire front of his shirt was covered in his own vomit, there was no way he smelled good.

“No, I’m good, I—” Stiles paused and took a breath. “Look, I just was beyond terrified. Seriously, the only thing that got hurt is my ego. I’m fine, really.”

“You don’t look fine,” Chris said with a frown. “Toss Peter your keys, I’ll drive you home and he can follow with your Jeep.”

Home. Where he had a board connecting all of the “animal” attacks together just sitting in his living room. Where Chris and Peter were at the center of it all. All of the blood drained from Stiles’ face at the thought of them stumbling across his crime board.

“Just give me five minutes to restart my heart and I’ll be fine to drive.” Stiles tried to sound calm, though he wasn’t sure quite how successful he was. “Seriously, I appreciate you guys coming out to make sure I’m fine, but my place is so far out of the way for the two of you.”

“Relax, we were bachelors once too. I don’t give a shit if you left out your dragon dildos and two week old dishes,” Peter said with a wry grin. “Come on, sweetheart, we’ll feel better if we know you got home safely.”

Stiles wanted to argue with Peter, wanted to let him know that it really was fine for him to drive himself home. But his words died on his tongues as he met Peter’s gaze. There was something almost hypnotic about it, it made him want to agree and go along with anything that Peter wanted.

“Just be careful with her, she sticks in second,” Stiles said, still mildly dazed as he handed Peter his keys.

Peter winked and took the keys from Stiles. “I’ll be gentle with her.”

——

They hadn’t followed him into his house, thank god. If they had even walked him to his door, they’d have seen the giant crime board and three or four stacks of paper alongside it. He didn’t exactly have a ton of places in the tiny house he rented to put the board so it lived in his living room in clear view of the front door. It had never been a problem before, but Stiles needed to find a new place to keep it before Chris or Peter decided to pay him a surprise visit.

But, still, small mercies. 

Stiles stripped himself of his vomit covered clothes and walked towards his shower. He needed to get the disgusting reminders of the day off of himself. The vomit, the dirt, the saliva from the wolf, all of it needed to go.

The feeling of being watched still prickled at the back of his neck, even as he closed his bathroom door behind him. There was no way for anything to be watching him in his tiny bathroom, there wasn’t even a window, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling. It must have been leftover fear from the experience he had earlier that evening, but knowing that didn’t make it feel any better.

Stiles pulled out his phone to put on some music to drown out the fear in his head and paused. There were a few missed calls and texts from Chris, but the timing of them made him hesitate. It took about twenty minutes to get from the office to the coffee shop thanks to all of the winding backroads. He remembered looking at the clock on the dash of Chris’s SUV as he adjusted the music volume and the time had been only ten minutes after the first call. 

They had been standing for about five minutes before Stiles had finally caved into letting them give him a ride home. Somehow Chris had been able to call him four times, get worried about him not answering, and get to him in under twenty minutes. Sure, Stiles had been driving for probably five minutes after running late leaving the office, but even if Chris had been speeding his ass off, the timeline didn’t make sense.

Were they following him? Did they somehow cause him to have that face to face with the wolf? He didn’t see how that was possible, it’s not like they could speak to animals and be like “Hey, gigantic scary wolf, go stare at Stiles and make him vomit out of fear!”

Stiles felt vaguely nauseous again. Sure, it was possible that he was reading way too much into this and that there were plenty of explanations, like that maybe the clock in Chris’s car was off, or that he was seriously mother henning Stiles after his fall at their place and so at the first feeling that something was off, he forced Peter to go speed off to see if Stiles was okay.

Yeah, there were those options, but they didn’t seem right. His gut told him that Chris and Peter had something to do with his experience with the wolf.

Stiles set his phone down on the side of his sink, music forgotten for the moment. 

He needed to stop thinking about this for the night. It was getting to be too much, almost suffocating. He was going to take his shower, put on some pajamas, triple check that all of his doors and windows were locked and all his blinds were drawn tight, then he was going to take some nyquil and force himself to sleep. 

Stiles had dealt with enough trauma for one day. The world wouldn’t fall apart if he let himself take the night off from untangling a convoluted web of murder.

——

Normally when Stiles drugged himself into a Nyquil coma, he didn’t dream. If he did somehow end up dreaming, it was mostly in abstract shapes and colors. But apparently the anxiety filling his body made its way into his dreams and clarified everything.

He couldn’t actually tell that he was dreaming, actually. It was like he had closed his eyes in the warmth and comfort of his small bedroom and immediately opened them alone in the middle of the woods. 

Well, he started out alone. Like, utterly alone, the only other sound that he could hear was that of the wind whistling through the bare leafed trees. It should have set his brain to high alert that something was wrong. But in the dream, he found the lack of anything calming somehow. Like he was the only living creature in the world.

He didn’t know how much time passed in the dream. It felt like he was wandering the dead woods alone both for years and for seconds when he saw a figure in the distance, obscured by a heavy fog that danced as Stiles walked through it.

Stiles paused and stared at the figure. To an extent, it seemed human. It stood upright with two arms and two legs, but something about it wasn’t right. The way it was hunched over with slightly too long arms broke any illusion of humanity distance provided the figure.

But still, Stiles didn’t feel afraid as he began to walk forward again. Actually, he felt almost… comforted by the creature. In his dream, he was confident that whatever the creature was, it would protect him. That feeling grew stronger as he approached it and could see it more clearly.

It absolutely wasn’t human. Something twinged at the back of Stiles’ mind as he looked at it, like a word at the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t quite speak, it felt familiar. Maybe it was deja vu, his mind pulling at images he had seen in passing as he flipped through page after page of documents, but he swore he had seen something like the creature before. But even if he couldn’t place why exactly it looked so familiar, he knew that it was some sort of canid monster. 

The creature stared at him with crimson eyes, the same color as the wolf’s eyes from earlier, but he didn’t feel the same overwhelming fear. There was love in those eyes, so much affection that Stiles almost forgot to breathe as he stared back.

“What are you?” Stiles asked in a small whisper.

The beast stepped forward on silent paws. It had to be at least seven feet tall, even hunched over like it was. Its hands were bigger than Stiles’ head with massive, razor sharp claws. But it was careful as it brought its hand to Stiles’ cheek and ran its thumb along his cheekbone ever so gently.

“You know that answer.” The beast spoke with Peter’s voice, but a gentler version without the biting edge that Peter usually carried around with him. Its mouth didn’t move but there was no doubt in Stiles’ mind that the words came from the beast.

“I’ve never seen anything like you before in my life.” As he spoke, Stiles knew that he was wrong. He had seen that creature before, notes in French and a detailed drawing in ink on time-yellowed pages flashed in his mind. But the memory was as solid as the fog around him. As he tried to focus on it, the more it slipped away.

“I’m a gatekeeper of sorts, protecting you from things you’re not quite ready for,” the beast said, crouching down to sit on the soft earth.

“What am I not ready for?” Stiles asked. He joined the beast on the ground, feeling like that was the right thing to do.

The beast’s ears twitched and it laughed softly. “Sweetheart, you don’t really think I’d answer that, do you?” Stiles could almost believe he was talking to Peter when the beast talked like that.

“You’ll learn in time.” The sarcastic edge to the beast’s voice went away and the pure, overwhelming fondness returned. It traced idle shapes in the dirt with a claw as it spoke. “Why are you so afraid? They care for you.”

They— Peter and Chris, Stiles assumed. “They’re murdering people,” he said and swallowed hard. “At least, I’m pretty sure that they are.”

“People who deserve it. None of the dead were innocent, all of them had ripped families apart and never paid for it.” 

“They’re not judge, jury, and executioner,” Stiles protested.

“ _ Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent _ .” The beast continued to draw shapes in the dirt as it spoke. Stiles looked down to the dirt and saw spirals and a shape he had seen once as a brewery logo. It was a… triskelion or something if he was remembering correctly.

“We hunt those that hunt us,” Stiles translated automatically. What the fuck? He didn’t speak French. How did he know that?

“Do you trust me, Stiles?”

“You’re a figment of my subconscious. I suppose this is me having a conversation with myself, sorting out how I feel about the fact that the two coolest guys in town are probably serial killers,” Stiles answered nearly immediately.

Again, the beast chuckled. “I wouldn’t say that I’m part of your subconscious. I’m a gatekeeper, placed here to keep you from what you’re not quite ready to handle.” The beast paused and cocked its head, blinking twice before it continued. “Though I suppose I haven’t been the best at that role. You’re stronger than anticipated.”

Stiles furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about.”

“You’ll learn in time,” the beast said cryptically, repeating its favorite phrase. Apparently getting a straight answer out of the stupid fucking trauma blocker in his head wasn’t possible.

“Am I in danger?” Stiles asked after a moment of glaring at the beast.

Again, it stared at him and blinked slowly. “Why would you be in danger?” It asked and stopped its drawing as it raised its hands to gently cup Stiles’ cheeks.

“Because I’m looking into the trail of murders that seem to follow Chris and Peter.”

“They would never hurt you,” the beast responded. It laid its head on top of Stiles’ head. Stiles could feel the rumble in its chest as it continued on, “They just want you to be ready first.”

“When will I be ready?” The warmth of the beast’s fur was comforting and Stiles felt his eyes closing despite himself.

“You need to trust them first,” the beast said with some twinge of amusement in its tone. “Trust that to them, you’re already pack. Even if your skin is still unmarred by the scar of the bite, you’re every inch the pack to them that they are to each other.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Holy shit was his subconscious cryptic. It would be nice if it just told him ‘hey Chris and Peter want to take you to the bone zone and you’re probably not on their hit list’ or something instead of whatever mumbo jumbo it was talking in. Like, yeah, okay, he was still just talking to himself and his subconscious didn’t have any magical ability to know things he didn’t, but, still.

“It means that you’re more loved than you’ll ever know,” the beast responded quietly and tenderly. 

“If you think that you’re ready,” the beast said after a long moment’s pause. “I want you to go to the woods and follow the trail. You’re smart, Stiles, you know what you need to look for.”

“What woods?” Stiles asked with a frown. The small town he called home for the moment was literally surrounded by the woods. There were probably thousands of trails in the county alone.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Fuck his subconscious cryptid. Seriously, why did it have to be so vague?

“Why should I even be listening to you?” Stiles pulled away from the embrace the beast had him wrapped in. “It’s not like you know any more than I do — you’re literally me. Like, this is just me having a conversation with the side of me that desperately wants to give Chris and Peter the benefit of the doubt.”

“If that’s what you want to take this as,” the beast said. It sounded almost hurt and its ears drooped down ever so slightly. “I’d tell you again that’s not what I am, but you’re not quite ready to listen yet.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Unless I’m being possessed by some demon that really wants me to bone down with Chris and Peter, yeah I’m pretty sure that’s what you are.”

“One day you’ll know the truth of everything,” the beast said. It stood up and stared down at Stiles. “But for now, let me leave you with a reminder. If you dig for information you’re not ready for, you’ll be consumed by it. Do yourself a favor and let yourself be loved without thought. I’m nothing but a figment of a thought, created to protect you from yourself. I cannot stop you from digging if that is truly what you want.”

Stiles felt almost mournful as he watched the beast turn around and take a step into the fog. As creepy and cryptic as the beast of his subconscious was, the love that poured off of it felt genuine. “I just want to find out the truth,” he said softly.

The beast turned around one final time to look at Stiles. “It will come in time if you’re patient.” 

Then, without another word the beast retreated into the fog, leaving Stiles alone in the dead woods. When he stood up to try and follow, to ask the beast more questions, Stiles was unable to find him again. Once again, the only thing in the woods were him, the fog, and the skeletal trees.

Stiles was jolted out of the woods in his dream by the sharp beeping of his alarm. His sheets were soaked through with sweat and despite the twelve hours of drugged sleep he got, he still felt exhausted, like he hadn’t slept at all. 

He forced himself out of bed and quickly shot his boss an email to take a sick day. There was no way he was going to be any sort of productive at work with how he felt. It seriously felt like he had actually been walking through the woods all night. He had never had a dream like that in the past, not one that felt that real. He had been able to smell and feel the soft fur of the beast. 

Stiles rubbed at his eyes and walked towards his crime board. He had something new he needed to add to it. He wasn’t sure what its importance was quite yet, but the fact that his subconscious had been repeatedly sketching it out in the dirt made him feel like he needed to make note of it. So he grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out the spiral shapes he had seen the beast drawing before pinning them to the board with the rest of the unknowns.

The amount of unknowns was adding up and it felt crushing and overwhelming. He had so many questions and he wasn’t quite sure how he would find the answers. According to his subconscious cryptid, he could find answers in the woods, but he had no fucking clue where in the woods.

Well, it wasn’t like he had any clearer leads aside from just straight up asking Chris and Peter if they were secretly serial killers or if Chris’s family’s mob was chasing them down. He had the day free, so maybe he could figure out just what woods his subconscious wanted him to wander through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor stiles getting his head fucked around with lol, this isn't even the worst of it all quite yet
> 
> also if it wasn't clear, the beast is like a figment of a thought Peter put into Stiles' mind as a safeguard to keep him from digging too deep into things he didn't want Stiles digging into. What he didn't anticipate was that Stiles fears no god nor giant alpha shift werewolf and really just wants some fucking answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: hey I'm making a coffee shop au  
> Literally everybody: yeah sure  
> Me: it involves serial killer couple chris and peter  
> Everybody: okay yeah that makes more sense
> 
> Also explanation for the scenario with Peter and Derek: Peter wasn't in the house fire, taking the place of Laura. Derek was trapped inside the fire and due to the trauma, ended up in a full wolf shift similar to Malia.


End file.
